Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Matthew Murdock—Daredevil

I just finished watching Marvel's Daredevil on Netflix for the second or third time now, and it's probably one of my favorite entries in the MCU to date, as well as giving us our first truly street-level character.

EDIT: I've tossed together a set of patch notes with the newest season of Daredevil finally released. You can find it here.

Awareness (4): Ignores obscurement penalties and Gang Up bonus. Limitation (–1, requires a Notice roll at –4 to work against creatures with no heartbeat for the remainder of the scene). (Heightened senses radar.)

Danger Sense (1): Limitation (–1, Notice roll is made at –4 against creatures with no heartbeat). (Heightened senses radar.)

As a boy in Hell's Kitchen, Matt Murdock was a bright young man. His father was a boxer but never wanted his son to fight, insisting his use his head instead of his hands, and Matt was supportive of his father, trying to encourage him and stitch him up after bad boxing matches. In fact, Matt wanted to help anyone that needed it, and at nine years old, Matt pushed a man out of the way of an oncoming truck, saving his life and having his eyes burned out by chemicals in the process. In the following months, the rest of Matt's senses intensified exponentially: his hearing, smell, touch, taste, and balance were heightened immensely. Soon after this, however, Matt's father was murdered for winning a match that he was supposed to lose.

Matt was left at an orphanage until he was found by Stick—a blind old man that trained Matt in martial arts and helped him to use his senses more effectively in combat. He became expert combatant, able to take on a dozen men at a time and come out on top, albeit with a fair number of cuts and bruises. He was taught meditative techniques to help him heal quickly, and his senses are so strong that he can feel the impression of ink to read words on a page, or hear the heartbeat of people to tell if they're lying or not.

Matt got too attached, however, and Stick left him before completing his training. Matt kept training on his own as he went through college, studying law and meeting his best friend, Foggy Nelson. After graduating top of their class, they went to intern at the prestigious firm Landman & Zack, almost landing a job before leaving due to a moral dispute.

Moving back into Hell's Kitchen, that night Matt heard a man doing some seriously messed up things with his daughter, and after being unable to deal with this in the confines of the law Matt took it into his own hands to persuade the man to stop. This began Matt's vigilante days (in a badass black costume), as he listened to the streets to find criminals and horrible people, sometimes going from place to place interrogating to find larger crime rings. At the same time, Matt worked with Foggy to found their new firm, Nelson & Murdock, hoping to make a difference in Hell's Kitchen as defense attorneys.

Vigilante Suit (Armor +1, Armor +0 if hit with a Raise)

Their first client was Karen Page, a woman who was being framed for murder due to discovering a money laundering operation of the Union Allied Construction. Matt and Foggy took her into their care, and Matt donned the suit to protect her when she went back to her apartment to retrieve the data from the UAC files. Shortly after, he met Claire Temple, a nurse that would stitch him up when he was wounded after being beaten nearly to death by the Russian mob.

The investigation of the local gang activity and Union Allied began to unravel a conspiracy led by Wilson Fisk, taking control of the entire Hell's Kitchen area. After a series of brutal interrogations, smashing through the Russian mob, and being framed as a terrorist by Fisk, a battle with the red ninja Nobu left Matt so battered that he nearly died, and likely would have had Foggy not discovered that he was the man in the mask. Shortly following this, Matt "persuaded" Fisk's armorer to make him a suit to avoid that kind of damage again, and releasing one of Fisk's old corrupt cops to bring Fisk's empire tumbling to the ground. He used his new suit (and the sweet batons that came with it) to beat Fisk down and allow him to be subdued for the police to put him behind bars.

For the next year or so, Matt worked to help keep the streets clean, while he, Foggy, and Karen worked to keep Nelson and Murdock afloat. While negotiating with a new client, however, he was put on the trail of a ruthless killer that was sweeping through Hell's Kitchen and annihilating criminals that he came across. He tracked the man down and kept him from assassinating his new client, but after a drawn out fight, the man drew a pistol and knocked Matt out in one shot.

More will be added as I gain the time to type out Matt's encounters in S2.

He has one new custom Edge:

TraceurRequirements: Novice, Agility d8+, Strength d8+, Climbing d6+
Traceurs are practitioners of parkour, the activity of moving from one point to another as efficiently and quickly as possible. They are equally comfortable in natural surroundings as in urban areas.
These runners are unaffected by Difficult Ground and are always able to move up to their full Pace, even over rough ground, ice, or swamp. They also gain a +2 to Strength rolls made to jump either for height or distance as well as Climbing rolls. Traceurs may add +2 to Agility rolls to maintain their balance as well during Chases, both for their maneuvering roll and to avoid any obstacles.

Daredevil has always been one of my favorite superheroes and I can't wait to see where they take him next!
—DoctorBoson

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Find a Hero!

Welcome!

From the ass that brought you Savage Everything! comes a blog solely dedicated to the Savaging of heroes, villains, and Extras from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (shorthanded as MCU)!

For those that are unaware, the MCU is the collection of movies and shows beginning with Iron Man back in 2008 produced in-house by Marvel. This includes The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Daredevil, among other works.

Again, to reiterate from the Ground Rules post, this will only be pulling from sources canon to the MCU—including some of the tie-in comics—but I won't be pulling from the comics universes, nor from movies produced by Fox or Sony, or any of the DC-verse (depending on how the cast ends up, I may end up creating their own separate Savageverse blog as well). If I miss a character (somehow) that you think deserves a spot on the blog, let me know!

If you like the MCU, check out the unofficial wiki for a fair bit of juicy content.

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